The Oregonian | Thomas BoydCal FC players celebrates after beating the Portland Timbers 1-0 in extra time in a U.S. Open Cup third-round soccer match, at Jeld-Wen Field in Portland, Ore. Timbers defender David Horst, right, walks off the field.

On Monday, the day before his pet project of a team was scheduled to take the field for one of the most unlikely and intriguing games in American soccer history, Hall of Fame forward and anti-establishment agitator Eric Wynalda shared a story about second chances.

He talked about the day that Sigi Schmid, an accomplished youth and college coach, saw Wynalda play in Simi Valley and promised to recommend him to the state team representing the southern half of California. Wynalda, then in high school, already had been cut from the lowest local level of U.S. Soccer’s Olympic Development Program, the country’s primary player identification system. He figured the big time already had passed him by.

“That was the very beginning of my career,” Wynalda said of Schmid’s gesture.

A few years later, on June 10, 1990 (the day after his 21st birthday), Wynalda played in the first of three World Cups. He would retire as the U.S. national team’s all-time leading goal scorer.

“If there was any lesson I ever learned from Sigi Schmid, trust your instincts,” Wynalda said Monday. “Never give up on people and never stop looking. Because they’re out there.”

Tuesday night near Seattle, that lesson may come back to bite Schmid in the most sensational way imaginable.

The U.S. Open Cup, now in its 99th year, is designed to give the little guys their own crack at the big time. It binds the tiers of American soccer’s competitive pyramid together, offers the winning team a spot in the CONCACAF Champions League and gives young or overlooked players the chance to get noticed.

Upsets aren’t uncommon. As MLS coaches weigh the threat posed by minor league or amateur opposition against the demands on their limited rosters, they often opt to field reserves in the single-elimination tournament’s early rounds.

Sometimes, unheralded opponents playing the biggest game of their lives have what it takes to spring a surprise. That’s what makes competitions like the U.S. Open Cup so much fun. But there’s nothing in the typical cup narrative that explains the run put together by Cal FC, the Ventura County-based amateur team of castoffs and rejects that Wynalda formed just four months ago.

Without a regular practice schedule, uniforms or any of the typical trappings of a high-level club, Cal FC won its regional U.S. Adult Soccer Association Open Cup qualifier and went on to beat the Kitsap Pumas, the reigning USL Premier Development League (fourth division) champions, in the competition’s first round.

On May 22, Cal crushed the Wilmington Hammerheads, a third-division professional team, 4-0, in North Carolina. That set up a date with the Portland Timbers last week.

No USASA team had ever scored on an MLS club in Open Cup play. Cal was outshot by Portland coach John Spencer’s starters 37-8. Timbers striker Kris Boyd missed a penalty kick. Then five minutes into overtime and against the run of play, Cal FC’s Artur Aghasyan, who tried out unsuccessfully for both Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA, found the net. The visitors were exhausted and overmatched, yet they somehow held on.

The Open Cup may never be the same.

Cal FC was trending worldwide on Twitter last week and has garnered coverage in a multitude of major outlets. Fox Soccer has rearranged its schedule to broadcast Tuesday night's round-of-16 matchup between Cal and Schmid’s Seattle Sounders, the three-time defending Open Cup champion. Wynalda, regarded by many as a belligerent iconoclast, appears to have been redeemed—or at least validated to some extent. He’s deflected a significant chunk of the credit, however, and insists that he’s done little more than offer an opportunity to players in need.

“When you’ve got talented guys, there’s not a whole lot of coaching going on,” he said. “The simplicity of all of this really is a better way to showcase these guys’ talents. I think they’ve embraced it. … When I first started this I just felt like they were just so beat up, they were so in doubt whether this was ever going to happen for them. I think that believing in them and being one of these guys who believed it could happen, but the fact that they believe in themselves now is probably the coolest part about all of this.”

Danny Barrera, who has four Open Cup goals, was a star at California-Santa Barbara and played professionally in Serbia. His brother, club captain Diego, bounced around the minors, went to Europe and once played for the Hammerheads. Goalkeeper Derby Carrillo was in preseason camp with the Sounders two years ago. Midfielder Richard Menjivar, who went to Cal State Bakersfield, scored for El Salvador’s Under-23 national team at the recent Olympic qualifying tournament.

Cal FC isn’t the Bad News Bears. The players have pedigree. They just slipped through the cracks.

“He’s got a bunch of guys who for one reason or another just didn’t work out because of timing or they just missed, but they’re technically very good players,” Schmid told Sporting News. “They’re young and eager and they still have that dream, and that’s what makes them a good team. What Eric is doing for them, and what they’re doing for themselves in this competition, is they’re putting the spotlight on themselves and for maybe two or three of them that will make the difference.”

Wynalda claimed Monday that he has “six or seven” players on his roster “who have standing offers to be professional when they’re done (with the Open Cup).” He made it clear that he’s “not going to stand in their way.” Cal FC, at least as it’s currently composed, will be history as soon as the clock strikes midnight on its Cinderella run. Wynalda has directed vehement criticism toward MLS for, in his view, making it more difficult for players to transfer abroad.

“If these guys aren’t with professional teams in August then I didn’t do my job,” he said. “The idea was to showcase them, first to find them, then give them a chance and let them play and let them show what we can do.”

The odds are, of course, that Schmid will give Wynalda a pat on the back before the Sounders administer a spanking. Cal FC played the one-in-a-hundred game last week in Portland. Seattle, at 7-3-3 in MLS, represents a different level.

But even if Cal exits the competition, it has already entered American soccer legend. Wynalda’s lesson about giving overlooked players a second chance, which he lived himself nearly 30 years ago in Simi Valley, is a good one. But the real impact of his Open Cup run will be left on the tournament itself.

Speaking to Sporting News earlier this year, Wynalda explained that his attacks on the American soccer establishment were his duty as a player and a patriot.

“I’m not trying to be a maverick. I’m trying to be voice of reason,” he said. “I want this sport to continue to flourish in this country, but there’s a whole other level that we’re just excluding ourselves from.”

If Wynalda never gets that MLS coaching job and if he’s never elected to run U.S. Soccer, he’ll be able to point to the spring of 2012, when a team composed of guys who make their living doing something other than kicking a ball got everyone talking about the U.S. Open Cup. It’s a tournament that’s been contested in the shadows for far too long, but one which offers a critical link between the game’s grassroots and its highest tier. Absent promotion and relegation, it’s the closest thing this country has to an authentic soccer structure.

“I’m a big believer in the Open Cup. It embodies the entire history of American soccer,” Schmid said.

What his Sounders have done to boost the tournament’s latter stages, drawing record crowds for the past two finals at CenturyLink Field, Cal FC has done for the early rounds. People are paying attention, and neither Wynalda nor his players will be forgotten for that.